The Federal Government has set up an inter-ministerial committee for the review of a New National Road Safety Strategy for Nigeria from 2012 to 2016.
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The new National Road Safety Strategy presented on Wednesday by the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) Corps Marshal, Osita Chidioka, through a memo by President Goodluck Jonathan was the subject of discussion at the Federal Executive Council meeting as part of the on-going performance review of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). The Committee is expected to report back to FEC in six months' time.
The Minister of Information, Labaran Maku who briefed journalists after the FEC meeting presided over by the Vice President, Namadi Sambo, explained that the Committee would fine-tune the New Road Safety Strategy and report back to the Council for eventual adoption and approval.
Mr. Maku said that the meeting was exclusively devoted to the discussion of the strategy saying, "As you're aware, our country is one country that over the years has worked had to put in place a national agency for the management, control and prevention of road accidents. We still remain one of the countries in the world with high percentage of accidents and loss of lives and property on our roads.
"Nigeria has over this period since the establishment of the Federal Road Safety Commission, done a lot of work in establishing systems, establishing departments as well as educating members of the public, undertaking training and enforcing traffic regulations across the country in partnership with states and local governments."
The Minister added that, "The FRSC has gone a long way and over the years, it has also done technical work in providing equipment to ensure that ICT is deployed to detect road abuses, and to control traffic across the country to prevent accidents and loss of lives and property.
"The agency has also along the way tried to make its services available in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Health for victims of road accidents by setting up mobile clinics along the highways so that whenever there are accidents, we can have emergency support for the victims before they are referred to regular hospitals."
He said that despite all these achievements, the nation still needs a national strategy to further control road accidents.
"So, in view of our membership of the United Nations programme on this, the UN declared the 2011 and 2020 as a decade of action on road safety across the world and as member state, Nigeria has been working to ensure that during this decade, we bring down the incidence of accidents on our roads and increase safety so that we can safeguard the lives and property of our citizens."
According to the Minister, having extensively discussed the document, the Council observed that for the final strategy to be adopted and approved, more work had to be done on it, which would require a collaboration among the Ministries of Works, Transport, Interior, and Health, among others to properly get a comprehensive road safety strategy.
Via: ChannelsTV